Creators of ‘Little America’ talk about signing with Apple and more

Little America is one of the highest rated original shows on Apple TV+ (from critics and viewers), and now the creators have shed some light on the show’s arrival on Apple’s streaming service.

Forbes has the interview with Kumail Nanjiani and Lee Eisenberg, looking at the path they took to get the show off the ground and in front of people’s eyeballs. Unsurprisingly, the creators pitched the idea to a variety of shops, including Apple, and said that many of the older, more “traditional” networks were “hesitant” on the idea of Little America.

They were all stuck in their old ways. They were like, ‘Wait, you want to do a show that doesn’t have any stars, that has majority non-white leads on our very mainstream network?’ They were a little scared of a show that was an anthology show about immigrants coming to America. That’s how we pitched it to some traditional platforms, but they didn’t want to do it.

As for why Apple turned out to be the company to work with, Nanjiani says it came down to the fact that the executives were passionate about the project after they heard about it, and were willing to let the creators make the show they wanted to make. They were ready to support it right out of the gate — which certainly rings true, considering the anthology series has already been renewed for a second season.

And the fact that Apple TV+ was the newest streaming service on the market wasn’t a dealbreaker for the creatives behind the show, either, especially to executive producer Alan Yang:

When we pitched another show I was involved in, Master of None, to Netflix, they were the new kid on the block. They had two shows. They had Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards, so when we decided to make the show for them, that was a leap of faith,” he recalled. “This was a similar thing where when we met with Apple, they hadn’t started making shows yet. What made it seem like a good fit for us was, firstly, their enthusiasm for the idea. When we pitched Little America to them in the room, they almost immediately started selling themselves to us and trying to convince us why they should have it. The tone and spirit of the show were very much in line with what they wanted on their service.

Interestingly, Eisenberg actually confirmed that a podcast is in the works that will expand the reach of Little America, something we actually just heard about.

Apple is such a worldwide and multi-faceted brand. We’re doing a podcast to delve more into the stories and the music on the show. There’ll also be a playlist for every episode. We’re putting out a book too. Apple has an infrastructure that just felt like it would be able to touch all of the different pieces that we wanted.

The fact that Apple has such a multi-faceted way to promote, and support, content of this nature is pretty exciting. Especially if it means we get even more stories like the ones that are already available to see in the first season of the anthology series.

The full interview is available now and certainly worth a read.

Meanwhile, Little America is available in full right now on Apple TV+. There are eight episodes in total, each telling a real life story of immigrants making their way in the United States of America.

Have you check it out yet? If so, what’d you think?